919: Everything is Blood
by scribblemyname
Summary: Nikolai Romanoff wasn't the only Red Room agent in the Atrax program. When his old rival is reactivated, Colleen "Hawkeye" Barton gets caught in the crossfire—and Nikolai doesn't like that.
1. As the Light Starts to Fade

**Author's Note: **

Prompts from lithiumlaughter: _And I guess I just wanted to tell you, as the light starts to fade, That you are the reason that I am not afraid._ OR... _All of this is a consequence brought on by our own hands, if you believe in that kind of thing._ As usual, I took 'or' to mean 'challenge yourself and do all.'

There is a good chance I screwed up minor things about spies, assassins, and this whole type of work, but I did the best I could without turning to a beta. Didn't want to ask the moon of anyone to read the entire series before checking all the technical details. So please accept my occasional handwaves and hopefully enjoy the fic.

Here you go, m'dear. Happy very belated birthday!

* * *

**Chapter 1: As the Light Starts to Fade**

Collen "Hawkeye" Barton preferred the simple jobs. Put an arrow in an enemy, a terrorist, the bad guy stopped in his or her tracks. She didn't care for the solo mission complicated stuff where she couldn't shunt off any of the legwork or paperwork.

Third hotel in a chain of them. The first, a plush but quiet room in Italy. The second, a dive the German cockroaches were above entering. The third here in Russia and the fact that this was Nikolai's home ground made Collie feel that much less comfortable.

Russian snow—she still had to snap Niko out of the Red Room in his mind whenever they worked on Russian snow—outside on the ground and more of it falling from a stone-grey sky. Her leg was propped up on a chair, her crossbow completing her arm at one side. The other hand filled out paperwork. She'd been hunting this trail for weeks now. This wasn't a simple job, put an arrow in an enemy or a terrorist and stop the bad guy in his or her tracks. She preferred the simple jobs. _You're just a girl with a bow._ This wasn't what she'd signed up for.

Mother and daughter traveling on the train, in cars, over the national borders, seeking asylum, refuge, what? It didn't matter. One of them was Collie's target and the only complication was which.

Not an orphan-maker, not a destroyer of families, not a blind assassin—Hawkeye only took legitimate targets from SHIELD. Phil had told her this was legitimate: a sleeper agent wired into her very genes to kill when triggered. But this was anything but simple and Collie was still just a girl with a bow. But Hawkeye wasn't.

She shoved back the papers, stretched out the kinks in her leg from "catching" the train outside of Russia. She hadn't missed the targets only because she hadn't shot. Mother. Daughter. Sleeper agent. Which one was it? Niko would have killed them both, which is why Hawkeye and not Atrax was given the assignment.

Orphaned. Childless. Who was she kidding that it mattered which?

Collie glanced about for the things she would need. It took her a moment to realize she _hadn't_ set down her bow. Outside the window, Russian snow was falling. Under her skin, her muscles were too tense.

* * *

They were holing up in a cabin beyond the edge of thin forest. The nearest town was a few miles away and far too far to save a fugitive.

Hawkeye (because that was who she had to be) stayed well out of view as she took in the thin wisp of smoke rising upward into the air, the silence.

Snow under her boots. Quiet, in the moment. It's what she did. Find a perch and hit her mark. _You will make this shot because you have to._ She nocked her arrow, completed her arm, bow in position, string held taut. She breathed her scars and didn't even feel the itch.

Wait for it. Wait for it.

The door to the cabin opened. _You will make this shot because you have to._ A calculated risk, the woman saw her because Hawkeye needed her to and turned back into the cabin, back toward her daughter.

_D— it._ The sleeper was eight years old. This wasn't what she'd signed up for.

Hawkeye let fly the arrow, watching to see if it hit its mark. _You have made the shot—_

A crack of pain. The mantra unfinished.

* * *

When she woke up, the completion of her arm was missing. No bows. No arrows. She opened her eyes and all she saw was red.

_Hell is blood on Iraqi sands and seeing the dead and dying bodies of friends through the scope of your rifle. Hell is blood on a frozen wasteland and the dead bodies of men and women you don't know why you killed._

_Belonging is red hair falling into Niko's eyes as he waltzes with her. One, two, three, and one, two, three… Belonging is the red of an arrow-split bullseye during target practice. Everything's red. Everything's blood._

She knew what happened in this room, but all that Collie could think was, _You will make the shot because you have to._


	2. You Are the Reason

**Chapter 2: You Are the Reason**

Hawkeye missed the check-in. Few people saw the chain of events set in motion by the event that failed to happen. Hawkeye's trackers had been silent while she infiltrated deep into enemy territory. Now, those trackers were activated and returning reports. Previous check-ins were assessed. Nearby field agents were diverted. A clear picture emerged quickly, drawn in faint but ominous brushstrokes.

Philippa Coulson frowned grimly at the report. Her frown straightened out into a tight, straight line when she read the last page. Yulian Belov had been reactivated.

* * *

She found Nikolai Romanoff on the exercise mats, not particularly surprising, given his predilection for excessive amounts of time training. He had brought down a small terrorist cell and his report was still cooling on her desk.

The redheaded Russian paid Coulson no mind until she finally said quietly, "Barton's been compromised."

Arrested motion. A flash of interest in brown eyes. It was remarkable how well Nikolai kept his emotions guarded and hidden, but Coulson was not blind. Barton meant something to him.

She stepped forward and held out the file folder she had been frowning at earlier. "Red Room."

He didn't take it.

"You're the only operative we have available who knows how to infiltrate the Red Room," Coulson stated calmly.

Nikolai reached out and took the file. "I am the only operative," he corrected evenly, "who knows the Red Room."

Coulson pulled her hand back. She had confidence in Nikolai, Atrax, the deadliest assassin in the world, but she also knew what he was risking if he chose to go back. "This wouldn't be a single agent operation."

He skimmed through the brief, snapped it shut, and looked at her expressionlessly. Finally, he nodded.

She let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.

* * *

Nikolai "Niko" Romanoff, codename Atrax, had been born in Russia and defected to SHIELD only due to Colleen Barton's intervention. He was the best agent the Red Room had ever produced, the perfect supersoldier, assassin, and spy. There was more blood on his hands than he could ever wash out.

There should be aching blackness where his memory would have been, but the emptiness had never been that. The abyss had a name and a color. The Red Room, whispered memory and thought and DNA instructions written upon his bones. Silences whispered it; shadows murmured it; there was no peace, only the red reverie, the red room, the crunch of snow under his boots, the whisper of red under his fingertips, the color of red in his own hair. It couldn't be unwritten without unwinding the spiral and painting him over again and he'd been painted over too many times to trust it ever again, no matter the hands or the master or the friend who offered the wires and whispers and remaking. Everything was red; everything was blood.

Atrax gathered his weapons, putting knives and guns and poison-tipped blades designed just for him away on his person, under his clothes, in the sheaths in his boots, in the memory of flesh. He _was_ a weapon and he didn't forget it.

Collie wasn't innocent. Collie... When he fit her into all of his broken places, both of them felt whole again. On all sides, this was personal.

There was one thing in this world he had that was covered in blood but that wasn't blood. An archer, an arrow, a hawk-eyed falconer who looked at Niko and found that which was written under the blood and the red and the whispers and the shadows of night. One thing. Nikolai Romanoff let himself slide into reverie, red room, whatever you could call that place where Atrax lived and Niko didn't belong. He wouldn't let them have Collie.

She wasn't blood. He was.


	3. This Is a Consequence

**Chapter 3: This Is a Consequence**

_The blood has left Russia. When the spider comes, you bleed at its pleasure; when the soldier comes, you die. There are words for things in Russia and names given to blood and death. _

_The Winter Soldier had said to him before she left for Croatia, "Spiders come and go, bledno-pauchok, but winter soldiers on." She packed her weapons with meticulous care._

_Yulian's eyes darkened. "My name is Atrax."_

_She looked at him with the unchanging eyes of death and he knew that for her, there had only ever been one Atrax._

_Russia. Glorious, the beautiful Motherland—_he_ served her, not that Romanov. He was her champion. Nevertheless, he lifted his gun and saluted the Soldier with his nod of acknowledgement. She had served Russia far longer than he. She would serve her after he was dust._

_She left him, but unlike Nikolai Romanov, she went out for a purpose and intended to return. Yulian Belov had other plans. Whether his predecessor wished to return or not, he would._

_To the Red Room._

* * *

Collie counted the tiny cracks in the ceiling above her as she noted each strap biting into her flesh. They had stripped her of all but her pants and sports bra, and she doubted the room was without surveillance.

The room was _red_—red walls, red ceiling, a blood-spattered look to the door. Machines whirred and hummed in the deeper silence around her. She could almost hear the hissing, the whispers of all the agents before her in this room. She couldn't call them prisoners, though the name may have been as fitting. This was no prison cell; this was the room of the prison architect, where they made prisons of muscle and mind.

She had special counter-triggers and anti-conditioning SHIELD had trained into her. She had made what preparations she could; she held the rest at the ready. But though her relaxed muscles announced her resignation, she was not at rest. She was carefully testing the restraints by tensing and relaxing various body parts and judging whether amputation or dislocation would do the job of getting her free.

Collie had no doubt that Niko was coming for her—_Phil_ was most certainly—but like h– she was going to be the damsel in distress when they got here. She was an asset. She needed to think like one.

As she went about her subtle work and assessment, she counted the cracks in the ceiling above her: sixty. She had been awake for two hours and twenty-two minutes and nobody came.

* * *

The woman had brown hair and callused fingers. Hawkeye. American.

The blonde, blue-eyed agent studied her from the other side of the glass. They'd put her in there to give lie to any hope that she would be rescued. It was a reminder that they could steal her soul and leave her body.

Whispers, wires, the spark of electricity—the Room wrote onto their flesh and bones and muscles and minds the skills and memories its agents needed, but this man had received far too little from the Room, and he had been 'spared' even this.

He hadn't been given the serum and enhancements given to the first Atrax. He hadn't been given the weapons, the bites and the blades and the nanites. Yulian Belov had nothing more than his own strength and grit pushing him harder and harder in a passion for Russia and her protection to drive him through the Red Room and help him hit the marks of his predecessor and, eventually, surpass them.

Yulian hadn't known he was ready until he studied the Red Room statistics for one, Nikolai Romanoff—_Atrax_—and realized that his own strength and passion had pushed him over the same marks. Without enhancements. Without a super-soldier serum. Without the Winter Soldier putting her metal hand on his shoulder to guide him into becoming the best Russian agent in existence. Nikolai was legend, but Nikolai was gone, and Yulian remained.

Not entirely, he reminded himself.

Nikolai had destroyed his trainers and handlers and all previous candidates of the Atrax program. It was the Red Room way, survival of the fittest, deployment of the best. Yulian had yet to do the same. His trainer had died at the hands of a crazed male prostitute, one Yulian had dispatched as a necessary duty and satisfying revenge, but the previous Atrax lived on and fought under the Russian name, as though he were still Russia's hero, its lethal funnel spider to attack wherever and whenever he felt like it. It was past time to eliminate that spider. The elimination orders had gone out even before Nikolai's final defection. It was time for Yulian to hold the only Atrax name.

He stared through the one-way glass at his bait. She had gone down too easily for an assassin. She was the product of western inferiority. She had stolen Nikolai's loyalty and orchestrated his loss.

She was muttering to herself in the red room where so many had been rewritten, rewired. The words became a low, meaningless stream. Her trigger words perhaps? SHIELD's conditioning had always been subpar.

Yulian Belov—_Atrax_—stepped out of the room and followed the winding corridors above ground to his lookout. He'd laid his web. He waited.


	4. Brought On By Our Own Hands

**Chapter 4: Brought On By Our Own Hands**

The Russian winter wind was bracing where Yulian waited. Memory, unadulterated with blood-red taint, played about the edges of his mind.

_Atrax, they'd called the redhead. Atrax after the deadly spider, despite the fact that they were all deadly and all enrolled in the atrax program._

_"Atrax," they said. "Show the pale little spider what you've learned."_

_They weren't peers and Yulian was a boy to Nikolai's unaging adulthood, but they weren't trainer and trainee either. Nikolai was Atrax. Yulian was a potential candidate. They were rivals.  
_

_Yulian couldn't destroy him. He couldn't even make him bleed._

The silken threads trembled, the scent of smoke. Yulian looked up sharply. He had expected Atrax to infiltrate the Red Room, utilizing some of those legendary skills it had taken years for Yulian to learn. He had expected the covert, deadly web of a spider. He _hadn't_ expected Nikolai Romanoff to enter through the front door, fire bursting through the automatic defenses, as though he'd been issued an engraved invitation.

Of course, he didn't know that Atrax had been told that the Red Room missed him, nor had Yulian ever heard that Nikolai had been born in fire.

* * *

In every sense of the word, Atrax was home.

The Russian snow was falling thickly and crunched beneath his feet. Sirens wailed and somewhere in the heart of the building was his target. He was Atrax and he was home.

The Red Room had changed his security codes and somewhere in all the wires and series of zeros and ones and the implants written in electricity and blood were other codes from the Soviet era, codes from his first wife, from Bee, and others he had been before they wiped him out in another layer of one, two, three and one, two, three.

He found one that worked and let the sirens wail.

There was no infiltrating the Red Room when you were Red Room. There was blood and bones crunching under boots in the Russian winter, for winters were for war. There was Russian stoicism and relentless mind games and red, red, _red_. He was here to extract a target and paint the one who took her red.

* * *

When Collie woke again, she dry-heaved and wondered what the h– kind of drug they'd pumped her with. She was strapped down to a table. Red walls, red. She felt her mind clear enough to remember where she was and what had happened—in general. The details were sketchy, involving primarily a crack on the back of her head, blackness, then drug-induced delirium.

But _something_ had brought her alert.

Never mind that. It was probably Niko. Or Coulson. Or a team of Red Room scientists getting ready to rewrite her brain. The short of it was she needed to get the h– out of dodge and fast, or at least smart. She chose to dislocate her right wrist rather than her left. Her bow and arrows were gone, but she intended to get them back.

She popped her joint back into place and got to work on the leg restraints. They had undressed her down to her underwear and managed to clear out every single weapon she usually had on her. As soon as she was off the bed, she found a scalpel on the side counter, made herself not think about its actual purpose, unscrewed one of the restraints, and slammed it into the cameras.

If Collie was in the Red Room, there was no way she wouldn't find some weapons soon. Clothes were a much lesser priority.

* * *

"Bledno-pauchok," Nikolai greeted Yulian. _Pale little spider_.

Yulian grinned with sharp teeth. "You will call me Atrax."

Nikolai cocked his head slightly, taking that in, eyes flickering with understanding of what all of this was about. "You wish to kill me."

"You have betrayed your country," Yulian snarled.

Nikolai's answer was not the expected defense, though it could have been argued the Red Room betrayed him first. No, he proved that Yulian had chosen very, very well. "You have taken my hawk."

Yulian did not disagree.


	5. If You Believe

**Chapter 5: If You Believe**

Every once in a while, Agent Colleen "Hawkeye" Barton of SHIELD remembered why it was so important that Niko have a _partner_ when he was waging war on the Red Room. Nikolai had the rather unfortunate tendency to overreact—and pull such stunts as burning a building to the ground with Collie still inside it.

"D— Russian!" she vented as she rammed a scalpel through another defending hostile and finally managed to reach her clothes. It was just her typical sort of luck that the bow wasn't with them.

Collie's quiver was replaceable, arrows were _designed_ to be replaceable, and she could fight in borrowed pants and jacket from one of the guards here if she wanted to take the time for them, but her bow was her bow and she was going to get it back.

Smoke poured through the ventilation system, making her hack. She checked the downed guard for usable weapons and wired the door shut long enough to pull on her own clothes and his jacket over them. The back wall was warm to the touch, so she decided to keep heading south through the facility until she figured a way out of there.

But first, where was her bow?

* * *

Collie didn't worry about escaping. She didn't worry that everything was going too smoothly because, frankly, the shootout in the hallway, the fire collapsing walls and bringing down part of the floor above her, the shattered glass, the wailing alarms, the fist/knife/etc. fight with another set of guards in a back hallway meant this was hardly 'too easy.'

Atrax had planned this operation, Atrax had her back, and there was no way in heaven or earth that Collie would believe that was her Niko out there instead of the merciless, ruthless operative this place had trained him to be.

She didn't even worry about how he managed to set fire to the place so they couldn't put it out. She doubted this was their headquarters. Her instincts said it was an outpost.

Collie had managed to survive this far. She'd been inside the room that made and remade Niko into Atrax, and she'd gotten out on her own strength while he stormed the place. She wasn't worried.

Safety was Niko, was her bow, was the sound of sirens wailing through her hearing aid...

She paused and inhaled sharply as she leaned against a wall. Time was running short, and she really should have thought of this sooner. She used the modified comm to signal her quiver. The wonders of modern technology. Now she just had to get a few rooms over and get out before Atrax brought the whole building down. He certainly seemed to be trying to.

* * *

"I surpassed your marks," Yulian told him. "In all things, I am your equal or your better."

Atrax heard him and understood what it meant. It meant that Yulian was stronger and faster, that the fights over the years where he had ground Yulian into the dust were over. It meant that Yulian had grown up as a long time ago, Atrax had grown up against the Winter Soldier. As far as experience went though, it didn't mean a thing. It had never been Atrax's talents that brought him the highest success rate in the history of the program; it had been his skills.

He had remembered what Yulian had forgotten, that they were _spies_, that the art of manipulation and understanding the mark's mindset were things you could not simply learn. They were the tools that came from ruthless instincts and long years of slipping into another persona over and over and over.

Atrax knew Yulian. This was a rite of passage, proof of Yulian's strength. This was loving the game and the challenge of it. This was a situation where SHIELD's infiltration team could take down enough of the extras to matter and where the Winter Soldier was not on the premises.

This was hand-to-hand combat with an equal and a peer, but one who didn't know that Atrax no longer worked alone.

* * *

Collie slipped out onto the roof, favoring her left leg and having to twist in ways that _hurt_ in order to avoid all the patches of flames. She found a sufficient perch to assess the situation.

A SHIELD quinjet shouldn't have surprised her, but it did. She had known that Phil would come and known that Niko would find her, but she hadn't really realized she was worth this level of an extraction to Fury and Hill.

Her eyes found two twisting, lethal combats in the yard between gates and building. She set her quiver on the concrete and winced as she pulled out an arrow. Collie hated dislocating wrists.

She braced her leg, ignored the blazing inferno at her back, and pulled back along the string.

_Breathe, Hawkeye. Breathe._

Red hair, yellow hair. Two spiders dancing in the light of the flames. She didn't know the history here. She wouldn't shoot to kill.

_You will make the shot..._


	6. In That Sort of Thing

**Chapter 6: In That Sort of Thing**

On the flight back, Niko wouldn't stop asking her questions. Every five minutes, just as Collie was finally starting to drift off under the lull of painkillers and the simple safe feeling of being surrounded by her own people, Niko would ask something quietly in Ukrainian, the one language only the two of them were fluent in of those aboard the quinjet.

_How did you lose your hearing?_

_What foods are you allergic to?_

_What was your favorite pastime as a child?_

_Who was your mentor in the circus?_

_Who did you lose in the service?_

They were personal questions, painful pieces of her past she had traded to him for safekeeping and trust. She didn't know why he was asking, but she answered in Ukrainian because it was Niko asking, and the wild glimmer in his eyes demanded it.

Finally, Niko looked out the window.

"Thank you for coming," Collie said.

He looked at her for a long moment, neither of them speaking. Finally, his hand brushed her shoulder as he came over to carefully pack away her bow and quiver in her duffel. "Sleep," he said gently.

She closed her eyes and did not dream.


End file.
